Red Cross hits home run with website for blood donation appointments; use it for next week

Cindy Anderson Last fall, I whined loudly with my Red Cross mishandles a blood donation appointment blog post. Now it’s time for kudos. 

Local volunteer Cindy Anderson (pictured here from a 2008 blood drive) phoned me last week about scheduling an appointment for next week’s blood drive. I told her I preferred to make an appointment via their website and she graciously called back a day later with the details. It works slick. A day later, I even used it to change my appointment time. Here are the links/steps:

  • Go to: Give Blood Give Life
  • Select MN from the map and you end up here.
  • Select Donate Blood/Donate Blood Now in the upper right and you end up here.
  • Input 55057 zip code and select 5 miles for the radius and you’ll get a database generated webpage of all the upcoming dates/locations for local blood drives including those at the Northfield Ballroom next Tues and Wed and at Culver’s on Sat.
  • Click on a location and you’ll be give a list of timeslots indicating which ones are taken and which are available.
  • blood donation appt confirmationClick on your choice and you’re then prompted to login with either your Donor ID or your Name and DOB.
  • You’re then sent an email confirmation (see image). Hang onto it in case you need to change your appointment like I needed to.

See all the LoGroNo blood donation blog posts.

Also see this week’s Nfld News story, One pint given, up to three saved, with quotes from our neighbor, long-time Red Cross volunteer Sandy Pieri.

One Comment

  1. Griff Wigley said:

    As I was getting ready to depart from my donation appointment tonight, the site coordinator for this week’s blood donation drive introduced himself to me and apologized for the problems last fall. That was a nice touch.

    I told him how pleased I was to be able to schedule my appointment online and then asked him when the people at the onsite registration table will have mobile internet access so as to deal with last-minute schedule changes, as the info they have is 24 hours old. (One of the morning regulars at GBM brought this issue to my attention today.)

    He said he thought it would happen within a year when they’re due to get a whole new computer system.

    FYI, I came right home and scheduled myself for April at Carleton. Several dates are available before then.

    January 20, 2010

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